PUBLISHED ON GLOBAL LOVE PROJECT

Each year as we move toward its end, through the darkness of the Winter Solstice and peaking up on the return of the light, I think of a ritual I’d like to adopt for the New Year…a way to honor how far I’ve come and also what I’m calling in for the emerging year.

This year I’ve decided to write a love letter to myself each day, starting January 1st. I’ve been single for nearly a decade now, and while I still find all the yearnings and wantings and desirings for partnership ebb and flow, I also revere the strength that comes from being 100% responsible for my own love.

I have learned what it is to love myself, to walk my path alone, to feel how beautiful experiencing life with myself as my partner, can be. And yet in being human, in still wanting companionship, I often find myself yearning for the tender words, those sweet presents — love letters — that as a society we mostly associate with coming from someone else.

And so this year, I’ll give these words to myself. I’ll steal away five or ten quiet minutes out of each day, with my cup of tea and meditation in the morning, or on my way to dreamland as I sleepily give gratitude to the universe for what’s been. I’ll find this quiet time to write a love letter to myself…perhaps a long tome, perchance five exquisite words, that some up my love for myself on this particular day.

The gift in this practice is two-fold. On the day the letter is written, I create time for myself to love myself. I write the words I want to say to myself in that moment, that honor and laude and revere who I am. And as I tuck these little envelopes away, in a shoe box, or a drawer, neatly labeled and ready for next year, I’ll visually watch as my love for myself grows; a massive burgeoning of letters, stacks of penned love, that remind me of letters I wrote each day for my now ex-husband when he was away at sea. Oh what it was to love someone else so ardently at 19 years old, and what it is now to love myself in an infinitely deeper way, at 36.

And so in the following year, I’ll start off that New Year’s Day ritual reaping the seeds I’m sowing this year. I’ll spend another five minutes each day, this time receiving the gift I’d wrapped up and folded and enclosed in soft, gentle paper…spending another entire year with love, this time in the reading of those love letters to myself.

I’ll let myself be held by myself, I’ll remember just how deserving I choose for myself to be, how worthy I decide I can be of receiving love, knowing that it all starts with me.

And I invite you to do the same; whether you’re single or in partnership, loving the self is the greatest journey toward healing, toward having more love to share with everyone else.

So if it resonates, please join me in writing 365 love letters to yourself, and tell me about it below.

 

Please consider using recycled paper for your letters, and either composting or recycling them when you’ve finished with them. You can also create electronic love letters, and even use your email program’s scheduling feature (if it has one) to send the love letters to you automatically each day in the coming year.